


Five-patch puzzle

by Lobelia321



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Wanking. Bum. Tattoos. Sherlock's pov.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:14:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's  doing various important things when John interrupts his life with puzzling blushes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five-patch puzzle

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks: To an entire fandom of squee.  
> A/N: This fic started one way pre-season 2, and was then twisted into a new marvellous direction by season 2. What can I say.

**Title:** Five-patch puzzle  
 **Author:** Lobelia; lj user=lobelia321  
 **Fandom:** BBC Sherlock  
 **Pairing:** Sherlock Holmes / John Watson  
 **Rating:** NC-18. Mature.  
 **Length:** c. 2,800 words.  
 **Tags:** Sherlock's pov. Wanking. Bum. Tattoos.  
 **Warnings:** None.  
 **Disclaimer:** The characters belong to Arthur Conan Doyle and were subsequently fanficced by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Now I'm playing with them for no profit.  
 **Spoilers:** Teensy-tiny allusion to a two words of dialogue and one small act from _A Scandal in Belgravia_.  
 **Feedback:** Is loved very much. One line, one word even! :-)  
 **Summary:** Sherlock's doing various important things when John interrupts his life with puzzling blushes.

 **Thanks:** To an entire fandom of squee.  
 **A/N** : This fic started one way pre-season 2, and was then twisted into a new marvellous direction by season 2. What can I say.

 **Five-patch puzzle  
by Lobelia**

 

I'm in the living room, practising my fencing moves, when John walks in. I don't need to turn around: I see him in the convex surface of my coffee thermos.

"John," I say, blade poised mid-lunge (because people like to be greeted).

"Just popped down to Tesco's," he says and gives a short cough, "for a pint of milk." He lifts the plastic bag -- as proof? It proves precisely nothing.

He's flushed from the walk (ergo: he's gone much further than the local supermarket; alternative explanation: he's been running but why run with a bag of milk banging against your legs?); the tops of his ears look red (with cold, I suspect, although I'd have to do a tactile test to make sure); and _that_ is about as much as I can tell from a reflection so I spin around and flourish my sabre in a moulinet cut.

He's got blades of grass stuck to the outsides of his soles (no grass on the pavement between 221B Baker Street and Tesco's); drops of moisture cling to his trouser hems (damp vegetation, higher than lawn; ergo: has been to the park). Not Dorset Square, no: drops of muddy water along the left shin denote Regent's Park boating lake. He's been walking about in the park. Afterwards, he bought the milk as what? An alibi?

Why doesn't John want me to know that he's been walking in the park?

"Careful with that rapier," says John.

I narrow my eyes as I study his face for clues.

His face looks as it always does. Except for pale spots spreading onto the tops of his cheeks. Allergic reaction? Incipient flu? A blush?

I lower my sword hand, wrist pronated, take a hop and a step forward, and lightly run my finger along the top of John's left ear. It's not cold as I'd supposed. It's flaming hot.

What happens to John next is intriguing. The spots on his cheeks seep across his whole face, the rest of his ears go red, and he flinches back so violently that he drops his plastic bag.

 _Thunk_ , goes the plastic milk bottle.

"Will you not do that, please?" says John.

"What? Do what?"

He picks up the bag. "I'm not one of your cases."

"No," I say, thoughtful. He's half-way into the kitchen by the time I come up with a reply. "You're more of a puzzle than any case I've had."

He doesn't hear. He's clanking about with mugs and cups and beakers and test tubes. He really should leave my experiments alone. A set-up for testing the solubility of cigarette ash in Thames water is not a makeshift coffee kettle.

I hold the rapier vertically against my nose. I purse my lips and touch its cold sharp blade.

This may turn out to be a three-patch problem.

\---

I'm leaning out of the shower, trying to grab the towel on the other side of the bathroom wall, when John walks in. I wouldn't normally need to turn around. I would be able to see him in the mirror above the basin but it's misted over.

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry, I didn't know you were in here."

He's half-way out the door. I yell (because sometimes you have to yell to get people to understand). "Come back in! I'm on my way out."

He returns, hand on doorknob, face turned into the hallway. "You could lock the door, you know. I can always use Mrs Hudson's loo."

"Go right ahead. Don't mind me." I'm still scrabbling for the towel when he turns around. His face is vaguely red. His ears are bright red. His pupils do a double-take and a quick flick.

What was he flicking at? He was flicking at me, but not at my face. What was he looking at that's below my navel?

I take the towel and scrub it through my hair. Drops spray onto my shoulders. Steam puffs out through the open door but there's an undercurrent of cool air: John has been outside. Winter temperature clings to the wool of his jumper.

"By the way," I say into the towel across my face, "why did you go walking across to the boating lake yesterday?"

"I. What? How can you possibly... Okay, don't tell me. But." I stop moving the towel. I can sense a sentence coming in the hovering pause. Then: "I know you can't help yourself and it's brilliant and all the rest of it. But sometimes you've just got to..."

"Got to what?" I pull the towel off my face.

John blinks. His eyes are everywhere, just not on me. What can this portend? He's also not moved towards the loo.

"Got to remember that I'm not a case," he finishes.

He said that yesterday. He's repeating himself. Why?

"People...," he continues, and he's enunciating carefully, his left hand clenching and unclenching, he's still not looking at me, what's he looking at? The towel rail. "...like to preserve some semblance of privacy. I realise that you've got no conception of that but you could pretend. Not to know everything."

"Pretend," I say. Water drips onto the tiles. Cool air snakes through my pubic hair.

"Yup." He pushes out through the door.

"I thought you needed the..." I shout after him but he slams the door in my face. "Loo," I say to the closed wood.

I forget to dry myself as I pause to think. Condensation evaporates from shower door and mirror.

Why did he flick his eyes up and down? Why did he need to use the loo but leave without having used it? What am I missing?

"Yes," I say and punch the towel into a ball.

Why can't people use the loo? Why, to be precise, can't men use the loo even though they had planned to?

Anatomical, my dear Watson.

\---

I'm walking up and down from living room into kitchen and back, playing variations from Schubert, when I notice that the skull's not on the mantelpiece.

"John!" I lower bow and violin and leap up the stairs. "Did you take the skull?" I push through his half-open door, and there's John lying on his bed, prone and stark naked. There are traces of long-ago tan lines around the back of his neck and wrists but the rest of him is pale as a piglet.

There's a tiny tattoo on his back, just above the curve of his left buttock. It seems to be a pattern of interlocked blue lines.

Interesting.

He doesn't move. I wish he would. Then I could check for more tattoos.

"Did anyone ever teach you to knock?" mumbles John into his pillow.

What's he been up to? The ruddy shade of the tops of his ears is not a tan line. That's a flush.

"My skull," I say. My eyes dart around the room. He hasn't done much to it since he moved in. Half his clothes still seem to be stuffed into a duffel bag on the floor. The bed is one of Mrs Hudson's large mahogany numbers, definitely pre-Ikea vintage. The wardrobe is 1970s oak veneer. Curvaceous arabesques snake across the walls in aqua and cerise.

There's no desk, no chair, no wall decoration. His laptop teeters on the side of the mattress, lid half-closed. A pink-tasseled standard lamp sheds dust. A frayed waste paper basket cradles a dried up orange peel, a crunched up bag of doritos, and a number of balled-up bits of papers. I wish they weren't balled up so I could read what they say.

John says something.

"What?"

"Not here. Your skull. It's not here."

"I can see that."

"Have you asked Mrs Hudson?"

"Ah, Mrs Hudson," I say. This is a meaningless thing to say. I don't know why I said that. It's something to say so that I can look around some more.

Stains on ceiling (years old). Dusty lightbulb, wires askew (doesn't work; not been replaced for months). Underpants on top of pillow (boxershorts, pale blue).

Tissues in cardboard box on floor next to bed, within reach.

"Oh," I say. "Well, I'll be off then."

As I turn, I duck and bend and catch a glimpse of the laptop screen. It's the homepage of John's blog.

As I shut the door, I hear a muffled groan.

As I open my own laptop and type the blog's url into the address bar, I know what I will see even as I wait for the pictures to load.

Two pictures currently grace the homepage of John's blog: John's own 45 x 35 mm passport photo, and a photo of me, scanned in from the _Guardian_.

Okay: long walks in Regent's Park plus flushed ears plus blushed face plus clenching unclenching plus double-take flickings plus naked man on bed with tissues, staring at photo of other man and not turning around. Not revealing his front. Not revealing his _crotch_.

I let out a puff of air, lean back and stare at the ceiling.

Stain on ceiling: probably champagne, to judge by the dent of a cork mark next to it; probably no more than three years old; probably caused during a night of drunken revelry.

I also remember seeing something in John's room. It was the shadow of a skull, just visible under the bed.

Four-patch problem, I think. Simple to diagnose, tricky to solve.

\---

I'm at the microscope, categorising my slime mould slides, when John walks in. I don't need to look up; I know it's him by the lopsided sound of his gait.

"Sherlock," he says.

I hold up my hand. Fungal cataracts bloom under the lens.

"Can I ask you something?" he says.

I tear myself away from rainbow-coloured mildew. "No but ask anyway."

He stares at me. I stare back. We stare at each others' eyeballs.

He purses his mouth. "Forget it," he says and goes to the fridge.

"I wouldn't open that," I say.

"What have you done with the milk?" he says. "And the cheese? I had cheese in here." His voice has a tremolo shiver in it.

"Cheese?" I say. I glance at the microscope. "I may have..."

"You didn't," says John. "You didn't use my Philly cheese to grow a fungus culture in your petri dishes."

"Not necessarily," I hedge. "Anyway, it was past its sell-by date."

John's brow is contracted but I can tell he's pretending. He's pulling his facial features into a mask of annoyance but underneath there's another expression waiting to come out. He's in disguise.

Also, he hasn't shaved today. The outline of his chin is blurred.

Right. I have a hypothesis. And now I need to test it out.

I jump up. The slide slips and clatters onto the kitchen counter. Something flashes by outside (pigeon? plane?); the floor is sticky under my naked feet (dried orange juice? milk? alkali solution?); John's hair is scratchy against my palms (freshly-washed and dried).

"What?" he says as I rake my fingers across his scalp (rounded; hard; slight declivity above the occipital bone) and down across his ears (hot to the touch, as expected) to his neck (jumping with his pulse, as foreseen).

The clues are unmistakable.

If you eliminate the impossible, then what is left over is, however improbable, the answer to the riddle.

"I know what you're doing," says John.

Every now and then he does manage to surprise me.

"You're looking for clues and because you think you haven't got enough clues, you're trying to push for more," he says. "I'm not a case, though. I told you that."

"Why did you take my skull?"

"I don't mind, you know. Go right ahead. Keep doing whatever it is that you're doing."

"You mean this?" I move my hands back up to his temples.

He shrugs. "If it makes you happy, Sherlock."

"This is hardly about my happiness."

"No."

I stop. What does he mean, 'no'?

He says, "No, it never is. Why is that?"

"What?"

"Have you discovered what you were looking for, Sherlock? Quickened heartrate? Heightened epidemial temperature? Rush of blood to the extremities?"

Damn the doctor in him. I drop my hands.

He's not moving away. Now he lifts his own hands and in a mirror gesture presses them against the sides of _my_ head. He digs his fingers into my hair. He has to stretch up to do it; he's got his head tipped backward. His fingernails scratch grooves into my skull.

"Your heartrate, by contrast." His voice shivers. He leans his fingers, very lightly, against the artery under my jawbone. "Quite steady. And your skin." He brushes two fingers across my left cheek. "Dry and bloodless." He presses his thumbs into the corners of my eyes. "The pupils undilated." And suddenly, bypassing my anticipation, his right hand is on my crotch. "And your cock? Absolutely flaccid." Before I have a chance to step back or snatch his hand off me or reply or yell out or _do anything_ , he's walked out of the kitchen.

I look down at myself. Flaccid?

Why did I not check _his_ crotch?

Stupid. Stupid omission.

Always collect all the data available at any given time. Incomplete data set equals incomplete knowledge base.

A puzzle is only a puzzle as long as chinks of ignorance remain.

For now, my slime mould beckons.

\---

For every action: a reaction.

For every reaction: a fulcrum of inertia.

I'm lying on my bed, cock in hand, when John knocks. I know it's John; I can tell by the triple rhythm of his knuckles.

I lie there and think.

Think. Think. _Think_.

Decide.

There's a stain on this ceiling as well. It's large and dark and Latin-America-shaped. Tobacco? Seeped sewage from the floor above?

"Come in," I say.

John comes in.

I stare at the stain.

I don't need to turn my head to know he's looking at me.

Looking at my cock.

Nothing moves. Not a mote, not a flea, not a molecule of oxygen.

The sound of a cleared throat rings out like a gunshot.

"Why," that's John's voice, "why are you showing me this?"

Why? _Why?_ My own motives: what could they be? Deduce: display of self, blatant exhibitionism, reaction to earlier deductions and calculations, probabilities and processes of elimination, fingers in hair, hands on skin.

I close my eyes. It helps me think. I think.

Five patches tingle against my right forearm.

There's a disturbance in the atmosphere. The mattress moves (ten and a half stone). A hand lands on my cock-hand (37.5 degrees centigrade). The hand closes around mine and exerts pressure. The hand moves up and down and pulls my own hand with it (friction plus force).

I can hear my own breath, and I can hear his breath. There's a syncopated rhythm to our breaths, a kind of five-quarter beat. It's like a glissando of inhalations and exhalations; no, a crescendo, slow at first, building momentum and tempo. It breaks like a wave: throaty breaths, urgent huffs, desperate gulps.

Hot ejaculate bursts onto my stomach.

There's an involuntary arching of the spine and clenching of the buttocks.

Anatomically entirely predictable.

My body slumps back onto the sheets.

My cock goes soft. That, too, an unsurprising physiological after-effect. My hand unflexes around it; John's hand stays wrapped around mine.

Nothing happens for a few seconds.

Then the mattress shifts and John's mouth is pressed against mine for one strange moment.

I open my eyes.

He looks at me (pupils dilated; vein jumping at side of neck).

"Can I ask you something?" I say.

He shrugs assent.

"What does your tattoo mean?"

The corners of his eyes break into a grin. "Which one?" he says.

"Which one..."

" _Now_ your pupils are dilating."

"You have two?" Somehow I find it hard to breathe in.

"Two?" His grin widens into his hair line.

"More than two? But where are they?"

John jumps up and laughs. "Really, Sherlock. You need to ask? I'd have thought you could work this one out on your own."

"But I need to see..."

John's eyebrows are wings in flight. "Yes," he says. "Quite."

I stare at John.

John stares at me.

A smear of come clings to his right thumb.

"John," I say. "Could you possibly take your trousers off?"

 

THE END.

\----

All original bits © Lobelia321  
Written between 28 December 2011 (pre-series 2) and 3 January 2012.

LJ: http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/756784.html  
A03: http://archiveofourown.org/works/311749


End file.
